Old Business: (Virginia) -Survey needs feedback to be integrated. Then it should be sent out to membership. Each person will get a separate link for completing their survey.

Elections (Lill): Nominating Committee needs three people. March for committee work and April 1 for ballot and additional nominations. Christi Whitworth will be the board member on the nominating committee. All board members need to email Christi with your 2016-17 intention to serve and in which role(s).

Membership (Nancy); We need Shape the Future memberships. If we recruit new members at an event then we can offer a discounted membership. For every two of those we get a free national membership to use how we want ($49 value). We also want to encourage people to renew early. After March 15, the website to pay dues the link to renew will be active. Nancy will send out a notice on March 15 on how to renew.

Annual meeting (Lill): When to have the branch meeting at the state Annual meeting? Preference for a Saturday afternoon meeting at 2:15 p.m. Opportunity for recruitment and network is expected at that time. Lill will check on the availability of a space for our meeting. Emphasis of the meeting: lookout for the survey, pull out a couple items to discuss;connecting to groups in the community that need to get messages out across the state; examples of groups we have worked with and things we have done;

Launch Event for Equal Rights Amendment North Carolina Alliance (ERA-NC) on April 12 (Equal Pay Day) (Virginia): For details contact Denny McGuire or Virginia Adamson. Branches can join as members of the coalition. Notification should happen at the annual meeting. We could add to the website and newsletter for THB. Use it raise awareness for Equal Pay Day. Website is era-nc.org.

Virginia Adamson, THB member and consultant to the Board called the meeting to order at 3:30 p.m. on the conference call. She volunteered to act as Secretary.

Roll Call

Present:

Virginia Adamson

Karla Atkinson

Diane Schneider

Lill Van Order

Christi Whitworth

Absent:

Lyndee Champion Ivey

Chesney Reich

Introductions

Each person introduced themselves so that Virginia could begin to recognize their voices. Virginia introduced herself as a new THB member and Past State President of BPW/NC. Many said that they wanted the branch to continue and believed it served a purpose in the state. Virginia had received no word from Lyndee or Chesney about their participation in the meeting.

Short Term Actions

Motion 1

Passed

Motion 2

Passed

Appoint Interim President: Karla confirmed that the bylaws allowed the Board to appoint an interim President. Karla moved and it was duly seconded that Christi Whitworth and Lill Van Order be appointed interim Co-Presidents to serve out the unexpired term of President (through June 30, 2015).

Nominating Committee: Karla moved and it was duly seconded that Christi Whitworth (as chair), Nancy Shoemaker and Virginia Adamson be appointed to the Nominating Committee to develop a slate for the 2015-2016 fiscal year. To hold elections the slate needs to be ready in mid-February if elections are to be held/concluded at the annual meeting.

Communications to the Branch members: Karla explained that she had agreed to make sure that information from the State and National would be forwarded to the members. With the appointment of interim Co-Presidents, they will take on the responsibility of communicating to the branch members, to AAUW NC President, and to have the email changed for National.

Seventh Year Assessment

There was discussion about what needed to be reviewed and what time line needed to be followed for changes to bylaws, policies, etc. Karla confirmed that the bylaws allow for a vote at the annual meeting. Virginia proposed a meeting on January 29 from 7-8:30 p.m. to have Doris Bernlohr and Nancy Shoemaker provide a background on the beginnings of the branch. Subsequent meetings will be scheduled to work on the assessment. Karla agreed to provide links or copies of the bylaws, policies and other pertinent documents to the board members. Other topics to be considered as proposed by Virginia in the call to the meeting were:

More than 20 members of the branch registered for the AAUW NC annual meeting and almost all of them attended the 8:15 am annual meeting of the branch that preceded the state meeting. We also welcomed three new dual members to the branch during the weekend — including Kathryn Braeman, the representative from the AAUW board who flew in for the state meeting.

After discussion at the previous meeting, three documents were sent to the branch action list for review and comment:

Branch bylaws with mandatory changes (Feb. 25)
Information on mandatory changes can be found at www.aauw.org. The board was asked to agree that the changes were mandatory or editorial, and so could be submitted to AAUW without a vote of the branch.

Branch policies with changes including formalizing the discount policy for financial hardship (Mar. 2)
The substantive changes here were discussed on the last board conference call.

Branch budget for 2013-2014 (Mar. 9)
This will guide branch spending until June 30, 2014. It is our intention to produce a 2014-2015 budget much earlier.

There were no additional issues raised about the documents, and so approval of all three was put to a vote of the branch board. Four of the seven board members voted to approve these documents.